Friday, February 15, 2013

Looking for love advice? Why not ask some Disney princes?

Several heads turned. “Right, there are
several Prince Charmings, aren't there?”

One
dressed in blue stepped forward to resolve my confusion. He was
vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him.

“Well,
really, it's Princes Charming, properly speaking. Charming is ...”
He fumbled for a moment, at a loss for the word he needed. “It's
like an extra part of the title. An adjective, not really a name.
We've had real proper names from time to time,” he said. Then he
paused again.

“Sorry.
Had trouble remembering what my name is right now. I've been called
Florian, Frederick, David, and James. It's not like our names matter;
it's the what we are that matters, not the who. We're all pretty
interchangeable on the personal level – one prince is as good as
another.”

Interchangeable.
Another word for disposable. I wondered if even their wives could tell them apart if they swapped clothes and traded places for the day. Neither Florian nor any of his other names sounded familiar, and I
honestly couldn't recognize him from his looks, so I had to ask: “Er.
Which one are you, again?”

“I'm
Snow White's,” he said.

“How
did you court her?” I asked.

“Well,
first I started singing with her when she thought she was alone and
singing to herself,” he said. He looked at me hopefully.

“Did
she like that?” I asked. I couldn't remember that part of the
movie.

“No,
actually, she found it terrifying and creepy, and she ran away from
me.” He sighed. “She didn't return my affections
until after I woke her up from that enchanted sleep. I was lucky the
witch did that, I don't think I would have gotten her to hold still
long enough otherwise.”

“It
was the same for both of us,” chipped in a prince wearing red.
“Kissing her awake from an enchanted sleep. Plant one on her while
she's asleep and she knows she's yours when she wakes up.”

Sleeping
Beauty's prince. In the old French fairy tale, the prince visited the sleeping
maiden, and she woke up nine months later. With twins. I wanted sound
advice, not a prescription for magical roofies. “Ah. Well, uh, nice
meeting you.” I turned to another prince, wearing what looked like
an old-fashioned military uniform, yellow with gold trim.

“How
about you, Prince?”

The
next prince paused. “I don't say I really did anything. The ladies
came to me, and I picked out the one with the smallest feet. Had the
devil of a time finding her, but that's what servants are for. You
just need to be yourself - rich, powerful, tall, and handsome, that
is - and the ladies will come to you. You'll have your pick of the
litter.”

A
fourth prince nodded in agreement. “I thought I'd go with a good
singer, but then I changed my mind to go with a mute girl who was
much cuter and really eager to do anything for me. And I mean, like,
anything,” he said with a smile. “Turns out she was also a
good singer, just had really bad laryngitis, so that was totally the
right choice. Just stand around, be rich, powerful, tall, and
handsome, and then pick one out, man. Nothing to it.”

I
looked around the room, and indeed, they almost all were tall and
handsome, and wore their rich clothes with the assurance of old
money. But there was one - a small and slightly darker-complexioned fellow - who was scratching at his sleeves with the discomfort of the newly rich.

“Aladdin?”
I said. He'd gotten some real face time in his Disney feature, so it
was easy enough to tell who it was. “What if you aren't rich,
handsome, tall, and powerful?”

“Then
cheat,” he said. “Lie, cheat, and steal your way to the top.”
He paused. “Hey, I may be shorter than the rest of those clowns,
but I looked tall to her in comparison to her dad. So I got the tall.
And I'm handsome.”

He
puffed himself up to his full height. “So. If you ain't rich and
powerful, claw your way up and you can make her yours. Show your
rivals no mercy, show her a good time, and all the lies won't
matter so long as you pull through.”

Having
a genie at your disposal probably helped, too, but I didn't have any
magic lamps at my disposal. I'm not the sort of fellow inclined to
skirt moral, legal, and physical laws, either; this was going in the
same file with the prescription for magical roofies.

The
next fellow looked totally unfamiliar. “Who are you?” I said.
Sorting through faceless vaguely princes was hard, but I really
couldn't remember this one. Not at all.

“Well,
you might know me better wearing my old face. They called me Beast.”
His eyes gleamed. “I'm the smart one of this lot, here.”

Beast
I could remember. He'd been nearly as prominent in his movie as
Aladdin had been in his. “Tall, but not handsome. Rich, but
outcast. You had a tough time of it, didn't you?” I said.“Tell
me, how on Earth did you hook Belle? How did you get her to fall in
love with you?”

“Ah.” That made a certain amount of sense. I decided not to ask him about his feelings for Belle, reflecting instead on the lengthy prison sentences associated with kidnapping cases.

Half
a dozen princes, and what had I learned?

Well,
I should simply be a namelessly bland tall, handsome, wealthy, and
influential fellow, and pick one of the easily-impressed girls
flinging themselves at me. If the girls weren't flinging themselves
at me quickly enough, I should get someone to apply magical
roofies to one of them, and have my way with her in her sleep - then
she'd be mine when she woke up.

If
I wasn't rich and famous enough for that, I should lie, cheat, and steal; kidnapping my chosen bride
by force if necessary. Then I should play head games with her until
she ended up loving me in spite of – or because of – the
way I'd abused and deceived her.